BICs are used primarily to provide a means of automating some specific step (activity) in a process flow. After the BIC is registered with any instance of EPX’s Application Server that is interested, that BIC can be used any number of times in any number of process flows on those Application Server instances. BICs are independent components that present a specific interface to one or more Application Server instances, through which they can return details about themselves and accept requests to handle work items. Like human participants in process flows, BICs can:
create work item versions (using authorized access control)
receive and modify work item versions (using authorized access control)
return work item versions to the process flow
interface with external systems
A BIC must run in a BIC manager in a separate Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and may be registered with multiple instances of EPX’s Application Server.